Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: COHOUSING-L digest 622

[HeidiNYS (HeidiNYS]

Dear Hal,

It may be 'cold comfort', but your situation  may be not so unusual.  We have 
had contact with perhaps 200 over the course of perhaps 6-7 years 
development/prep work and 3 yrs in residence.  

We did have a connection with one pice of land over this period, which, as 
Becky points out may help.  From what I gather, consensus on location seems a 
huge hurdle.  We had someone willing to hold on to this land for us while we 
found folks, went thru board approvals, lost 3 full members [in a co-housing 
group originally numbering 12.  We are about to increase to 16-18 households, 
if anyone knows a family interested in Cantines "Island.  We are near 
Woodstock NY.]  found more folks, etc. 

We did also start rotating our meetings, all full group meetings remained 
weekends, but rotated between saturdays and Sundays.  committee meetings were 
usually just before full business meetings.  

It was a surprisingly long development time those six or so years!!  We had 
ads in the local paper, RE section, and made up 5x8 posters with good visual 
appeal, and tear-offs at the bottom.  We spoke/set up tables where ever we 
could, including Clearwater festivals, a most likely source for members, we 
thought.....  tho never did yield a direct result!!  
so, keep trying.... having a long perspective may help.  I always thought 
this had so much appeal, we'd be stampeded with people. I'm still surprised 
we weren't!!  
good luck,
Ruth

In a message dated 2/15/01 11:12:31 AM, cohousing-l [at] freedom2.mtn.org 
writes:
> Here in Chicago Marty has been trying to form a core group Chicago Village
> Cohousing (formerly Lake Village Cohousing) for a Cohousing community in
> the city of Chicago.
> 
> Although we have over 60 contacts we can't seem to get people together for
> meetings.
> 
> I would like feed back from cohousing groups and communities on ads they
> have created to attract new people.
> 
> What has worked or what does not work.
> 
> Hal, Chicago Cohousing Network